On this day

1411 – Battle of Harlaw, one of the bloodiest battles in Scotland, takes place.

1567 - Mary Queen of Scots was imprisoned and forced to abdicate her throne to her 1 year old son, James VI.

1883 - Captain Matthew Webb, the first man to swim the English channel (1875) drowned whilst attempting to swim the rapids at Niagara Falls.

1911 - Machu Picchu was discovered by Hiram Bingham.

1943 - World War II: The start of Operation Gomorrah saw British and Canadian aeroplanes bomb Hamburg by night, and Americans by day. By the end of the operation in November, 9,000 tons of explosives had killed more than 30,000 people and destroyed 280,000 buildings.

1967 – During an official state visit to Canada, French President Charles de Gaulle declares to a crowd of over 100,000 in Montreal: Vive le Québec libre! (Long live free Quebec!). The statement, interpreted as support for Quebec independence, delighted many Quebecers but angered the Canadian government and many English Canadians.

2001 – Simeon Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, the last Tsar of Bulgaria when he was a child, is sworn in as Prime Minister of Bulgaria, becoming the first monarch in history to regain political power through democratic election to a different office.

2005 –Lance Armstrong wins his seventh consecutive Tour de France.

2009 – The MV Arctic Sea, reportedly carrying a cargo of timber, is allegedly hijacked in the North Sea by pirates, but much speculation remains as to the actual cargo and events.

(24-07-2012 12:02 )skully Wrote:  1883 - Captain Matthew Webb, the first man to swim the English channel (1875) drowned whilst attempting to swim the rapids at Niagara Falls.

Webb was born at Dawley in Shropshire on the 18th of January 1848, the son of a doctor and one of 12 children. While still a boy he saved one of his brothers from drowning in the Severn, and while serving on board a training ship in the Mersey, he again distinguished himself by saving a drowning comrade.

He joined the Merchant Navy, served his apprenticeship in the East India and China trade, shipped as second mate for several owners, and in 1874, was awarded the first Stanhope gold medal by the Royal Humane Society for an attempt to save a seaman who had fallen overboard from the Cunard steamship "Russia."

The award also came with a cash reward of £100 (over £10,000 in today's money) so in 1875 Webb abandoned a sea-faring life and became a professional swimmer. On the 3rd of July he swam from Blackwall Pier to Gravesend, a distance of 20 miles, in 4 hours and 45 minutes, a record which remained unbeaten until 1899. In the same year, after one unsuccessful attempt, he swam the English Channel on the 24th of August, crossing from Dover to Calais in 21 hours 45 minutes. For the next few years Webb gave performances of diving and swimming at the Royal Aquarium in London and elsewhere.

His final stunt was to be a dangerous swim through the Whirlpool Rapids on the Niagara River below Niagara Falls, a feat many observers considered suicidal. Although Webb failed in an attempt at raising interest in funding the event, on 24 July 1883 he jumped into the river from a small boat located near the Niagara Falls Suspension Bridge and began his swim.

Accounts of the time indicate that in all likelihood Webb successfully survived the first part of the swim, but died in the section of the river located near the entrance to the whirlpool. His body was recovered the following day and he was interred in Oakwood Cemetery, Niagara Falls, New York.

He was 35 years old.

1603 – James VI of Scotland is crowned as king of England (James I of England), bringing the Kingdom of England and Kingdom of Scotland into personal union.

1797 - British naval commander Horatio Nelson's right arm was shattered by grapeshot during an assault on Tenerife. The injured arm was amputated later.

1837 – The first commercial use of an electric telegraph is successfully demonstrated by William Cooke and Charles Wheatstone on 25 July 1837 between Euston and Camden Town in London.

1946 – Operation Crossroads: an atomic bomb is detonated underwater in the lagoon of Bikini atoll.

1946 – At Club 500 in Atlantic City, New Jersey, Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis stage their first show as a comedy team.

1959 – SR-N1 hovercraft crosses the English Channel from Calais to Dover in just over 2 hours.

1976 – Viking program: Viking 1 takes the famous Face on Mars photo.

1978 - The first test-tube baby in Britain was born (Louise Joy Brown), at Oldham Hospital, Lancashire. It had taken 12 years of research by gynaecologist Patrick Steptoe and Dr Robert Edwards to make the birth possible.

1984 - Soviet cosmonaut Svetlana Savitskaya became the first woman to walk in space.

2000 – Air France Flight 4590, a Concorde supersonic passenger jet, F-BTSC, crashes just after takeoff from Paris killing all 109 aboard and 4 on the ground.

2007 - Jeremy Clarkson and James May become the first people to reach the magnetic North Pole in a car.

2009 - The last British survivor of the World War I trenches, Harry Patch, died, aged 111. In 2007 he became the UK's oldest author when he collaborated with Richard van Emden to write The Last Fighting Tommy, a detailed account of his life.

1533 – Atahualpa, the 13th and last emperor of the Incas, dies by strangulation at the hands of Francisco Pizarro's Spanish conquistadors. His death marks the end of 300 years of Inca civilization.

1745 – The first recorded women's cricket match takes place near Guildford, England.

1803 – The Surrey Iron Railway, arguably the world's first public railway, opens in south London, England, Great Britain.

1845 - The SS Great Britain, (the first iron ship designed by Brunel), sailed from Liverpool on her maiden voyage.

1858 - Lionel Rothschild took his seat in the House of Commons to become Britain's first Jewish member of Parliament.

1941 – World War II: in response to the Japanese occupation of French Indochina, US President Franklin D. Roosevelt orders the seizure of all Japanese assets in the United States.

1943 - World War II: The Allies mounted one of the largest raids of the war, sending more than 1,000 aircraft to bomb the German industrial city of Hamburg. An estimated 60,000 people were killed.

1947 – Cold War: U.S. President Harry S. Truman signs the National Security Act of 1947 into United States law creating the Central Intelligence Agency, United States Department of Defense, United States Air Force, Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the United States National Security Council.

1951 – Walt Disney's 13th animated film, Alice in Wonderland, premieres in London.

1953 – Fidel Castro leads an unsuccessful attack on the Moncada Barracks, thus beginning the Cuban Revolution. The movement took the name of the date: 26th of July Movement

1963 – Syncom 2, the world's first geosynchronous satellite, is launched from Cape Canaveral on a Delta B booster.

1971 – Apollo program: launch of Apollo 15 on the first Apollo J-Mission, and first use of a Lunar Roving Vehicle.

1989 – A federal grand jury indicts Cornell University student Robert T. Morris, Jr. for releasing the Morris worm, thus becoming the first person to be prosecuted under the 1986 Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

2007 – Shambo, a black cow in Wales that had been adopted by the local Hindu community, is slaughtered due to a bovine tuberculosis infection, causing widespread controversy.

(26-07-2012 11:49 )skully Wrote:  1858 - Lionel Rothschild took his seat in the House of Commons to become Britain's first Jewish member of Parliament.

Although he finally took his seat in 1858 this was the culmination of an 11 year battle as Rothschild had already been elected to the House of Commons on three previous occasions. He was first elected in 1847 as one of four MPs for the City of London constituency but at that time Jews were still barred from sitting in the chamber due to the Christian oath required to be sworn in (Catholics had been allowed to be MPs since 1829).

Prime Minister Lord John Russell introduced a Jewish Disabilities Bill to remove the problem with the oath. In 1848, the bill was approved by the House of Commons but was twice rejected by the House of Lords. After being rejected again by the Upper House in 1849, Rothschild resigned his seat and stood again winning in a by-election in order to strengthen his claim.

In 1850, he entered the House of Commons to take his seat but refused to swear on a Christian Bible asking to use only the Old Testament. This was permitted but when omitting the words "upon the true faith of a Christian" from the oath he was required to leave.

In 1851 a new Jewish Disabilities Bill was defeated in the House of Lords. In the 1852 general election Rothschild was again elected but the next year the bill was again defeated in the upper house.

Finally, in 1858, the House of Lords agreed to a proposal to allow each house to decide its own oath. On 26 July 1858 de Rothschild took the oath with covered head, substituting "so help me, [using a Hebrew word for] God" for the ordinary form of oath, and thereupon took his seat as the first Jewish member of Parliament. He was re-elected in general elections in 1859 and 1865, but defeated in 1868; he was returned unopposed in a by-election in 1869 but defeated a second time in the general election in 1874.

Rothschild was proposed as a member of the House of Lords in 1868, but Queen Victoria refused to elevate him to this status. She denied that this was because Rothschild was a Jew. Instead the monarch claimed it was because of Rothschild's business activities, but few believed her. He died in 1879, aged 71.

In 1885 the Queen did raise Rothschild's son Nathan to the peerage. Nathan Mayer de Rothschild therefore became the first Jewish member of the House of Lords.

1054 – Siward, Earl of Northumbria invades Scotland and defeats Macbeth, King of Scotland somewhere north of the Firth of Forth.

1794 - Maximilien Robespierre, the architect of the French Revolution's Reign of Terror, was overthrown and arrested by the National Convention.

1890 – Vincent van Gogh shoots himself and dies two days later.

1940 - Bugs Bunny made his debut in the animated cartoon A Wild Hare.

1949 - The British De Havilland Comet, the first jet-propelled airliner, made its maiden flight. It was a 40-passenger airliner.

1953 – Fighting in the Korean War ends when the United States, China, and North Korea sign an armistice agreement. Syngman Rhee, President of South Korea, refuses to sign but pledges to observe the armistice.

1996 – Centennial Olympic Park bombing: in Atlanta, United States, a pipe bomb explodes at Centennial Olympic Park during the 1996 Summer Olympics. One woman (Alice Hawthorne) is killed, and a cameraman suffers a heart attack fleeing the scene. 111 are injured.

2005 – STS-114: NASA grounds the Space Shuttle, pending an investigation of the continuing problem with the shedding of foam insulation from the external fuel tank. During ascent, the external tank of the Space Shuttle Discovery sheds a piece of foam slightly smaller than the piece that caused the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster; this foam does not strike the spacecraft.

2012 – The opening ceremony of the 2012 Olympic Games in London. The last time that the Games were held in Britain was 1948.

1540 - Thomas Cromwell, Chancellor to Henry VIII and his chief minister, was executed. He was beheaded on Tower Hill for promoting the king's failed marriage to Anne of Cleves. Henry also married Catherine Howard (his 5th wife) on the same day.

1586 - Thomas Harriot was credited with bringing the first potato to Britain, (from Colombia) ahead of Sir Walter Raleigh.

1794 – Maximilien Robespierre and Louis Antoine de Saint-Just are executed by guillotine in Paris, France during the French Revolution.

1858 - Fingerprints were first used as a means of identification by William Herschel, who later established a fingerprint register.

1896 – The city of Miami, Florida is incorporated.

1914 – World War I: Austria-Hungary declares war on Serbia after Serbia rejects the conditions of an ultimatum sent by Austria on July 23 following the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand.

1935 – First flight of the Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress.

1943 - The worst British bombing raid on Hamburg so far during World War II virtually set the city on fire. In just 43 minutes, 2,326 tons of bombs killed 42,000 German civilians.

1976 – The Tangshan earthquake measuring between 7.8 and 8.2 moment magnitude flattens Tangshan in the People's Republic of China, killing 242,769 and injuring 164,851.

1996 – The remains of a prehistoric man are discovered near Kennewick, Washington. Such remains will be known as the Kennewick Man.

2008 A huge fire destroyed the historic Grand Pier at Weston-super-Mare. The pier was rebuilt at a cost of £39 million and reopened on 23rd October 2010.

1567 - James VI was crowned King of Scotland at Stirling.

1588 - The Spanish Armada was defeated by an English naval force under the command of Lord Charles Howard and Sir Francis Drake.

1836 – Inauguration of the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, France.

1899 – The First Hague Convention is signed.

1938 - Dennis the Menace first appeared in the 'Beano' comic.

1948 - King George VI opened the 14th Olympic Games opened in London - the first time the Games had been held in 12 years, due to World War II.

1957 – The International Atomic Energy Agency is established.

1973 – Greeks vote to abolish the monarchy, beginning the first period of the Metapolitefsi.

1981 - Prince Charles married Lady Diana Spencer at St. Paul's Cathedral in London. Over over 700 million television viewers in 74 countries tuned in.

1928 - The MGM lion roared for the first time.

1932 – Premiere of Walt Disney's Flowers and Trees, the first cartoon short to use Technicolor and the first Academy Award winning cartoon short.

1945 - The USS Indianapolis, which had just delivered key components of the Hiroshima atomic bomb to the Pacific island of Tinian, was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine. Only 316 out of 1,196 men survived the sinking and shark-infested waters.

1975 – Jimmy Hoffa disappears from the parking lot of the Machus Red Fox restaurant in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit, at about 2:30 p.m. He is never seen or heard from again, and will be declared legally dead on this date in 1982.

1991 - Italian tenor Pavarotti celebrated 30 years in opera with a huge, free concert in Hyde Park.

2003 – In Mexico, the last 'old style' Volkswagen Beetle rolls off the assembly line.

2006 – The world's longest running music show Top of the Pops is broadcast for the last time on BBC Two. The show had aired for 42 years.

30 BC – Battle of Alexandria: Mark Antony achieves a minor victory over Octavian's forces, but most of his army subsequently deserts, leading to his suicide.

1498 – On his third voyage to the Western Hemisphere, Christopher Columbus becomes the first European to discover the island of Trinidad.

1703 – Daniel Defoe is placed in a pillory for the crime of seditious libel after publishing a politically satirical pamphlet, but is pelted with flowers.

1856 – Christchurch, New Zealand is chartered as a city.

1904 - The Trans-Siberian railroad connecting the Ural Mountains with Russia's Pacific coast, was completed.

1910 - Dr Crippen was arrested aboard the SS Montrose as it was docking at Quebec. He was charged with the murder of his wife and was the first criminal to be caught by the use of radio.

1938 – Archaeologists discover engraved gold and silver plates from King Darius the Great in Persepolis.

1941 – The Holocaust: Under instructions from Adolf Hitler, Nazi official Hermann Göring, orders SS General Reinhard Heydrich to "submit to me as soon as possible a general plan of the administrative material and financial measures necessary for carrying out the desired Final Solution of the Jewish question.'' The demand led to the Holocaust and the genocide of approximately six million European Jews.

1948 – At Idlewild Field in New York, New York International Airport (later renamed John F. Kennedy International Airport) is dedicated.

1950 - Britain's first self-service store, (Sainsbury's) opened in Croydon.

1964 – Ranger 7 sends back the first close-up photographs of the moon, with images 1,000 times clearer than anything ever seen from earth-bound telescopes.

1987 – A rare, class F4 tornado rips through Edmonton, Alberta, killing 27 people and causing $330 million in damage.